


Priceless

by flammablehat



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Catharsis, Dom Percy, Dom/sub, F/M, Sub Vex'ahlia (Critical Role), in which i casually id fic all over the cr kinkmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 21:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20015284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flammablehat/pseuds/flammablehat
Summary: She never knows quite what to expect from him on nights like this, when the equilibrium briefly tips in the opposite direction. Just because she doesn’t fear him doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous. It would be foolish for either of them to forget.





	Priceless

**Author's Note:**

> I come to you with yet another kinkmeme fill, this time for [this prompt](https://criticalkink.dreamwidth.org/700.html?thread=380092#cmt380092) which asked for Dom Percy and sub Vex with a special request for voice kink. And that, dear reader, is exactly my kind of jam. 
> 
> I feel like I should mention that this fic references attempted sexual violence against Vex when she was a child, Vex as a sexually active teen, and sex work of a sort. It's not about any of those things, but, as always, proceed with caution if those kinds of details don't work for you.

Percy’s control is different from her own. For one thing, he’s wary of it. 

He told her once that he trusted himself in her hands. They were newer then, to this kind of play and to each other, and Vex hadn’t been certain at the time of how precisely he’d chosen that distinction. She knew now: he’d trusted her almost from their first meeting. His faith in her mastery over him, however? That had come later. 

Vex only remembers it feeling natural, bringing him to heel as if by a lead. She isn’t afraid of him and never has been, even when he’d reduced himself to nothing more than a burning coal in a hollow shell. Vex understood fire, she respected fire — knew its potential to gutter out just as easily as it might leap to the nearest tinder, consuming with indiscriminate rage. And she remembered, more than anything, the sweetness of his relief the first time she took the choice out of his hands. 

She never knows quite what to expect from him on nights like this, when the equilibrium briefly tips in the opposite direction. Just because she doesn’t fear him doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous. It would be foolish for either of them to forget.

He’s in his customary armor: his beautifully tailored coat, a snowy white cravat, a new waistcoat picked out in glittering silver thread, kidskin gloves. His tall, gleaming black boots. Vex lets her eyes trail his body from floor to collar with frank admiration. It’s tempting to shrug off the mood and simply have him still mostly dressed, fuck him unkempt. He approaches with sash in hand, a knowing smile deepening the shadow at the corner of his mouth. Vex lifts a shoulder, bites her lip for him, unrepentant. 

“Hold still,” he says, tilting her chin up. The sash descends over her eyes, flat and opaque. It’s silk, of course. He ties it firmly, strokes her cheek, lets her feel the buttery leather of his glove against her skin. 

“Are you going to tie me down?” Vex asks, sugary sweet. 

“Shhh.” Percy places a finger over her lips. It’s tempting to nip at him, offer her tongue, suck him into her mouth. Perhaps if she could see, she would. She doesn’t. She stands still and waits, because Percy’s control is cerebral, creative, fickle. If she wants to know his plans, she’ll have to submit to them. 

He draws his finger from her lips to her jaw, spreads his hand over her throat, flattens it on her chest. Lets it rise and fall with her breath. 

She is not in her customary armor. He’d asked her to wear a gown, something comfortable. Percy traces her neckline, a whisper of contact that makes her shiver. 

“You chose the blue,” he says. 

“It’s your favorite.” Vex finds herself sinking into his silence like hot water, the sting and revelation of it. 

She can hear him cross behind her. He runs his knuckles up her spine, over the lacing of her bodice. A few short tugs and the tie comes free, hushing through the eyelets. The gown loosens over her corset, a cool ripple of air insinuating itself between the layers. Percy steps up behind her, close enough for her to feel the chill touch of one of his gold buttons at her shoulder. 

“When I was a boy,” he begins, quite low, “father would sometimes have me accompany him to the stables when one of our stallions had been engaged to stud. We kept fine animals, maintained excellent records, and produced unmatched foals. So, for a price, we’d often host people of means who made the effort to bring their mares to us, occasionally across great distances.” He pushes the right sleeve of her gown off her shoulder as he speaks, drawing it down until he frees her arm. “He thought it was important I understand some of the more practical responsibilities a man might be called upon to manage. I’ll admit I found it less instructive in business than it was in the ah... rather savage indifference of rutting beasts.” 

“Oh? Do you fancy yourself a stallion, Percy?” Vex asks, arch. She isn’t beyond pushing him yet, just to test where the resistance begins. She doesn’t find it there, as she only hears a soft hum of amusement as he slips off her other sleeve. 

“I was almost fourteen the first time. If it had even occured to my father to consider the lasting impact, he might’ve recognized it was a poorly judged time to expose me to explicit fucking.” 

Vex snorts, leaning back against his chest for support as he has her step out of her gown. 

“But you’re a ranger,” he says, light. “I’m sure you witnessed your fair share of the natural way of things?” He places a hand over the vulnerable softness of her lower belly, and her playful response dissolves on her tongue. “How old were you,” he continues, voice a measured inevitability that tightens around her ribs like her stays, “the first time you let someone mount you?” 

In the dark Vex can’t help but relive it, sudden and vivid: the dry little storeroom; the baker’s assistant who’d been kind to her; the smells of yeast and barley and sweat as she steadied herself against a massive bag of flour; his hurried, excited panting—

“Fifteen,” she says, swallowing. 

Percy tucks a loose thread of hair behind her ear; she can almost feel the straight line of his nose at her nape. “And the first time someone tried?” 

The point of that particular knife is so sharp it’s almost painless. Even if it was hardly the greatest danger she’s managed to live through, she doesn’t like to remember the powerlessness or the accompanying terror. 

“I was eleven,” she says, lifting her chin. “Father’s subordinates were very… confident in his regard for them.” 

“And his lack thereof for you.” If he’s guessing, he sounds very certain about it. Vex flinches, and doesn’t elaborate. It turned out fine in the end. She and Vax had never strayed too far from each other in Sygorn. 

Percy lets her nurse the wound, going to work on her corset. Her chemise feels slightly damp as the stiff woven cotton peels away, another layer discarded. 

“You were fifteen,” Percy says, circling back with a contemplative tone. “Tell me about it.” 

“We were hungry,” Vex says, and stops. Of the many ways she could have begun, that would normally have been the last. Percy’s hands go still on her waist, a bloodhound picking up a scent. Too late to take it back. “We were hungry,” Vex says, deliberate. “Vax wouldn’t beg. I would. I did. And it wasn’t enough.” 

“You didn’t tell your brother,” Percy says, not-guessing again. 

“Vax would’ve left him holding his own intestines,” Vex says. 

“You’re right,” Percy agrees. “But that’s not why you didn’t tell him.” 

“He was just a baker’s boy, it didn’t matter,” Vex starts, impatient, and falls silent as Percy’s fingers dig into her hips. 

“He had something you wanted. You decided you would have it, which meant it became a question of cost.” She can feel him nuzzling behind her ear, softening the insinuation. “Is that where it began, Vex? What did he give you for your trouble?” 

“A day-old loaf. Two sweet rolls.” 

She can still see Vax’s face in the moment she’d pulled them out of her pack. The bread was rustic, the crumb already beginning to go stale. They’d wolfed it down silently, leaning into each other. Vax had savored his roll, picking it apart in tiny morsels that he let melt on his tongue. Vex remembered tearing into hers with her teeth, burning with satisfaction. 

Percy skims his hands under her fine muslin chemise, drawing it over her head. The drawers are next, rolling over the swell of her hips, their soft weight carrying them down her legs. Careful touches direct her onto their bed, nudging and guiding until she kneels before him. He slips his hands onto her thighs, a looming, invisible presence cupped around her. 

“When you grew hungry again, did you go back to that baker’s boy?” he asks. 

“No,” Vex says. 

“No?” 

“I went to the baker.” 

She’s not ashamed. She survived, Vax survived. She found Trinket, and Vax found the Clasp, and they’d had each other. 

The gentleness— the _pity_ she’s expecting doesn’t come. Percy huffs a soft noise, something in the sound she can’t quite place without seeing him. It could be surprise. It isn’t humor. He wouldn’t laugh at her, not over this. Her heart begins to thump in her breast, uncertain. 

“Clever, Vex,” he finally says, and she can hear it now, the sharp smile in his voice. It raises the fine hair on her arms, the back of her neck. She feels him lean in closer. “Who came after?” 

“What?” she asks, pulse still rabbiting. She can sense it now, the evening’s danger shifting into focus. 

“Who came after the baker?” Percy says, cut-glass accent making his meaning perfectly clear. “A crownsguard when Vax inevitably made a mistake? A farmer who caught you poaching his hens?” 

“Fuck you,” Vex says, sharp. He captures her jaw in one hand, holding her still. 

“You would have,” he says, sweet as a caress. “What do you think your father thought, when he learned I’d given you a title? He’s an ambassador, he knows how these things work—”

She doesn’t think — she just swings at him. It comes to nothing, her wrist caught in his hand before she has any hope of connecting. He uses his hold to jerk her forward so they’re face to face, his breath just as shallow as hers beyond the darkness of the blindfold. 

“For what it’s worth, had you tried to treat with me, I would’ve had far more than a quick tumble in exchange. I would have _owned_ you,” he bites the words into her ear. 

It shouldn’t send heat up her spine like branching lightning. It’s ugly and cruel, a deliberate perversion of one of her dearest memories. Percy reaches beneath her hair to grip the back of her neck, and it doesn’t matter that it shouldn’t feel this way, because her muscles unlock beneath his hands and she finds herself clutching at his shirt, his lapels, baring her throat to his too-sharp teeth. 

“You loved it,” he says, pressing the words into her jaw, down along her neck. “You got so very good at it, it must have bored you when it only took a wink to get what you wanted. It must have driven you mad to have us constantly at your heels, getting in the way, fucking everything up. Why pay thousands of gold for a health potion when ten minutes on your knees would suffice?”

A pained noise escapes Vex’s throat, the silk over her eyes growing damp. “Percy,” she gasps wetly, flayed raw. 

“Tie you down?” he demands with a note of incredulous laughter, relentless. “I could ask you to serve at my pleasure in the morning and find you waiting like a bitch with her tail up that same night. I’m not the stallion, Vex’ahlia,” he hisses, thumbing aside the wet leaking beneath the silk. “I’m still the man in the stable, watching a confused mare who just needs someone to make _use_ of her.” 

There’s no controlling the flood of tears or her sobbing breath as she clings to him, shaking. He squeezes her shoulder, down her arm, taking her hand and pressing it up between her legs, their laced fingers slipping against her where she’s tender and slick. 

“Your body is telling on you, my dear,” he says, skimming kisses over her chin, across her cheek. He brushes the blindfold off her eyes, sinks his free hand into the root of her mussed braid and turns her face up to his own. “Finish it,” he orders. 

She hiccups a soft, wounded sound, working to catch her breath. Her chest hitches with the quieting storm of emotion, subsiding almost as quickly as it came. It leaves her feeling wrung-out, weightless, blinking up at him through the overly bright glow of the room with damp eyes. He looks nowhere but at her, with such a ferocious kind of intensity she’s scalded by it. It’s welcome, cleansing. 

It takes almost nothing to push through into the sweet clench of release. Every part of her feels like an exposed nerve; between her own careful touch and the glide of soft leather against her, inside her, she shudders and doesn’t look away. 

Percy’s breath leaves him all at once. He carefully presses his forehead to hers. 

“Come here, come here,” he says, gathering her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest. The buttons of his coat poke her bare skin. She notes it distantly as he carries her away from the bed, settling them onto a little chaise she uses to dress in the mornings. 

He undoes her hair, smoothing out the tangles with gentle fingers. The gloves are gone, discarded on the floor. She turns her head against his shoulder and he’s there, kissing her so softly it’s almost reverent. 

“My brilliant, singular Vex.” He takes her hand as she reaches up to touch his face, pressing another kiss into her palm. 

“Hey,” she murmurs, pleased by the vaguely burred edge to her voice. 

“How are you feeling?” He cups her cheek, warmth spilling out of him when she tips the weight of her head into his hand. 

“Curious,” she says, hooking her fingers into his cravat, just holding on. 

“Oh?” Percy says. He shifts her closer against him, a small gathering motion that sends little waves of contentment out from her center, shivering happily in her skin. 

“‘ _Own_ me’?” She asks, enjoying his sudden blush. “Exactly how much would you have paid for the pleasure of my company, Percy?” The note of mild affront is a fun embellishment, especially as faint tremors of laughter begin to shake through him. 

“There’s no sum, Vex,” he says, drawing her up to his mouth, smiling against her lips. “You’re priceless.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please come talk to me! [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/flammablehat), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/flammablehat), [Dreamwidth](https://flammablehat.dreamwidth.org/), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/flammablehat/)


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